Star of Africa

Chapter 52

The column stayed back as Ben walked on alone in the sultry, overcast heat. The dirt road split off into a narrower path that led through a divide in the grassy rise and past the rickety wooden fence into the village. He knelt to inspect the ground for signs of tyre tracks, but either there were none to find or they’d been washed away in the last deluge of rain.

Back in the day, Ben had found himself in African villages not so very different, in Sudan and Sierra Leone. It looked like a well-tended settlement, extending over maybe a couple of acres on the edge of a thicket of trees and long grass and thorn bushes. To the other side, a further couple of acres were fenced off and cultivated, though he had no idea what kind of basic crop could be produced here. Last time he’d ventured into such a place had been many years ago, an in-and-out sortie as second-in-command of an SAS unit hunting a marauding guerrilla force called the Cross Bones Boys who had been kidnapping and butchering UN aid workers. People had died that day. He hadn’t had a lot of time to study rural African agriculture.

Ben kept walking, and the track took him deeper into the village, past little areas of garden and some wire-and-post enclosures where chickens scratched at the dirt and goats bleated nervously at his approach. The homes were traditional mud-walled roundhouses with carefully crafted domed roofs woven from sticks and thatch, each supported at its centre by a stout wooden pole where a primitive dwelling in a less tropical climate would have had a stone or clay chimney.

So far, nobody had taken a pot-shot at him from one of the huts. Everything seemed peaceful. Strangely peaceful, because apart from the few goats and chickens the place appeared deserted. As he walked on, he was beginning to wonder if a lookout had spotted the soldiers coming and the entire population of the village had fled. Which would most certainly have been the sensible thing to do.

It wasn’t until he followed the track around a bend and reached the very centre of the village that Ben saw a living soul. Then he understood why the place had seemed so deserted.

The heart of the settlement was a village square, except it was circular, about thirty yards in diameter, with the largest of the thatched dwellings at its northern edge, which Ben took to be the home of the chief or headman. Or headwoman, for that matter. It seemed as if the entire village, men, women and children, had gathered in the middle of the square in a big crowd of some fifty or sixty people, but not for any kind of happy or ceremonial occasion. Ben saw right away from the distressed looks on the villagers’ faces that some sort of commotion was going on, hidden from view at the centre of the crowd.

He felt like an intruder as he approached. A strange white man in a dirty army jacket appearing out of nowhere couldn’t be good news. Faces turned and fingers pointed and one or two people shied away. Ben held up his hands to show he was unarmed, smiled and tried to look as unmenacing as he could.

Rwanda had three official languages: French, English and Kinyarwanda. Of the two he knew, he reckoned that English was the most universally understood and his best bet.

‘What’s happening here? Can I help?’

An unarmed and unthreatening white man in the middle of rural Africa could be many things, but was probably most likely to be a doctor or an aid worker. The crowd parted to let him through. Many looks were darted at him, a few suspicious, some anxious, most of them trusting. Ben heard the sound of a child crying and howling in pain. ‘Can I help?’ he repeated. ‘Je peux vous aider?’

He soon saw what the commotion was. The crowd had gathered around an injured child, a small boy of maybe nine or ten. Women were weeping and men were frowning as they kneeled on the ground next to him, trying to stem the bleeding from his left arm and leg, which were badly lacerated and ripped open. The wounds were as fresh as they were ugly. They were nothing like the injuries made by a bullet or a knife. Ben had seen ones like these before, once, long ago, on a dead man. If these had been caused by the same thing, then this young boy was incredibly lucky to be alive.

Claw marks. Made by something very large and very powerful.

Ben bent over the child and asked, ‘What did this to him?’

From a chorus of explanations, he was quickly able to piece the answer together. The boy had been attacked by a lion that had started appearing in the thicket of woods near the village. It had been hanging around for weeks, stalking among the huts at night. First it took just a couple of goats. Then it started focusing its attentions on people. It killed a woman who was washing clothes down by the river. Now it had attacked this boy while he was out gathering firewood. A tearful woman who seemed to be the child’s mother pointed at the thicket beyond the edge of the village and said the animal was still in there, hidden and lying in wait for its next victim.

Ben knew that a rogue male, separated from its pride and taken to hunting alone, could do this. Especially if something was wrong with it — if it was old, or sick, or weakened in some way that had affected its ability to go after normal prey. Thin-skinned, weak, defenceless and slow-moving humans were an easy catch by comparison.

Crouched next to the bleeding child and holding his hand with a tortured expression of concern was an African man of about thirty, whom Ben took to be the boy’s father. He wore khaki shorts and a tattered sleeveless sweatshirt from which his powerful shoulders protruded broadly, as lean and muscled as a human anatomy chart. From his left lobe hung a single earring fashioned out of beads and braided cord, with a pendant disc of copper wire that shone like gold even under the overcast sky. He looked up at Ben with pain in his eyes and asked, ‘Are you a doctor?’

‘British army medic,’ Ben said, which was partly true as all SAS soldiers received basic medic training. He asked to take a look and kneeled on the ground by the boy. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Gatete,’ the father said.

Ben spoke gently. ‘Gatete, I need you to keep still while I take a look, okay?’ This was one brave kid. He held in his tears while Ben inspected the wounds. They were deep, but no major blood vessels had been severed. The main concern was infection, because a lion’s claws were covered in bacteria from the bits of rotting meat that collected behind them.

‘I can stitch these,’ Ben said. ‘But he’s going to need antibiotics.’

Gatete’s father got to his feet. ‘You have medicine?’

‘I think so,’ Ben said. He was thinking of the first aid kit back there with the column. But it wasn’t that simple. He said, ‘My name’s Ben. What’s yours?’

‘I am Sizwe.’ The boy’s father pointed at another large, muscular African standing behind him. ‘This is my brother, Uwase.’

‘Sizwe, I need your help too. Does this village have any kind of motor vehicle?’

Sizwe thought for a moment, then nodded and told Ben that Gahigi, the richest man in the village because he had the most goats, used a truck to take them to market in the nearest town. Also his friend Ntwali — pointing at another of the men in the crowd — had a four-wheel-drive. Why was Ben asking this?

‘Because I’m going to have to take them from you,’ Ben said. ‘I’m sorry to do it. But the man who brought me here is a dangerous man and I need to persuade him to move on from here as fast as possible, in everyone’s best interests. That’s why I need the trucks. You understand?’

‘Who is this man?’

Ben said, ‘His name is Khosa.’

The mention of the name caused a ripple effect of fear among the villagers. Suddenly, everyone was looking at Ben with hostility.

‘I’m not one of his people,’ Ben reassured them. ‘I promise that, and I mean you no harm. You have to let me help you. Look—’ To make the trade more even and show his goodwill, he took off his watch and handed it to Sizwe. ‘It’s an Omega Seamaster. Swiss made. A new one would cost you over a thousand dollars. And it’s automatic, so it will keep going forever and never need a battery. Take it. It’s yours.’

After a brief conference with the others, Sizwe nodded and said Ben could have the trucks if he could bring the medicine for his boy. The deal was struck.

Now all Ben had to do was get Khosa to honour it.

He left the village at a run and sprinted back down the dirt track to where the General was waiting impatiently.

‘Well, soldier?’

‘Trade,’ Ben said. ‘Two trucks, for some penicillin and a surgical needle and thread. I’ll need that first aid kit.’

Khosa narrowed his eyes. ‘For what you need this?’

Which forced Ben to have to explain the situation with the injured child. Khosa showed little interest, until he heard about the lion. His eyes lit up with fascination. He turned to his gathered soldiers and issued the command that Ben hadn’t wanted to hear.

‘Move on. We are going into this village.’

‘I did a deal with these people, General,’ Ben protested. ‘I just need a few minutes to treat the child. Then we take the trucks, and we go. Fair’s fair. There’s nothing else to gain from your going in there.’

‘You are not in authority here, soldier. And Jean-Pierre Khosa does not trade with cockroaches. We go.’